No, ethernet used coax back in the day. Token ring was a protocol that used the same wire but different layout (a ring…) and a different protocol. Cool stuff though. controllable latency. inherent redundancy. Too hard to use for casual use though.
The original I was thinking of was 10Base5, or “thicknet”, which was followed by 10Base2 or “thinnet” which was the first one to have in my home. The yellow hose was a nightmare to pull and terminate, but was worth it when the only alternative was 9600k serial cables.
9600k would have been alright - I think you mean 9.6k baud.
Oops! Yes, you are correct. I mistyped. What can I say, I’m old and my mind isn’t what it used to be. That’s what happens when you started out at 2400 baud.
Isn’t an unshielded coax cable an oxymoron?
Lots of cool ideas here, but it occurs to me that the cable itself probably isn’t the problem. the problem is probably resistance in the connections.
If it were me, and money was an issue, I would go buy new splitters a coax crimper and some new ends. I would trim off the existing coax ends, crimp on new ones and use new splitters.
This will probably fix your loss of signal issues.
That actually makes more sense now that I think of it. I remember a problem with an old land line I used to have, back when I used to have a land line. It was getting a lot of static and when the guy finally checked inside the wall he realized it was all rusted from moister buildup. Cleaned that section and it all went back to normal.
There are various qualities of coax. The two main types used in homes are RG-6 and RG-59. RG-59 is thinner and was very popular back when cable TV was limited to a very few channels and has been completely supplanted by the thicker and better shielded RG-6. I’ve seen some RG-59 that had a braided shield that was no more than 50% coverage. RG-6 usually combines a 90% braided shield with a 100% aluminized mylar foil shield.
When it comes to a wireless network be careful about your expectations. 802.11n has some startling best case performance, but in reality it can be pretty pedestrian. If it is required to co-exist with other gear in the 2.4GHz band it won’t get anything like best performance. So, often the recommendation is to restrict it to the 5GHz band. The problem here is that those frequencies can be seriously attenuated, even inside buildings. Especially if the intervening structure is at all damp.
Some history and technology.
The earliest Ethernet was 3Mb/s, but was very rarely seen. The first common version was the 10Mb/s version. 10Base5. That was first specified on coax with very tight specifications. It was a nightmare. Minimum curve radius, cable was marked at the points where a tap was allowed to added. Taps were done with a special jig, insulated drill bit, and usually involved far too many men in white coats.
It is a shared medium. One of the bits of magic about Ethernet is the CSMA/CD protocol. Carrier sense, multiple access with collision detection. Lots of devices all on the same physical bit of wire all talking to one another. A device listens to see if the wire is free (carrier sense), if it is free is sends a packet. It also listens as the packet goes out. If another device saw the same opportunity to send, the packets will mess one another up. Whilst listening, a sender can tell if this happens (collision detection.) The high quality coax specified meant that the length of the network in time mattered. The shortest allowed packet had to be able to reach the ends of the network before the sender had stopped sending, otherwise collision detection would not work. The cable was able to cope with a length of 500 metres, and you were allowed one repeater before the overall length exceeded the time specification. 10Base5 means 10Mb/s and 500 metres long.
Later Ethernet - thinwire 10Base2 - used RB59 - dirt cheap. Solid core so it wouldn’t kink. Lossy, so length limited, The 2 in 10Base2 meant 200 metres.
Finally twisted pair was used. 10BaseT. This was electrically different in that of the 4 pairs of wire in the cable, one was used to transmit, the other to receive. There were only devices at each end. Collision detection was at best, messy, especially in environments where coax and twisted pair coexisted.
After that 100Mb/s 1000Mb/s and now 10,000MB/s.
The astounding improvement in speed comes about mostly from extraordinary effort in the transceivers, which incorporate very advanced signal processing capability, that dynamically compensates for issues in the cable. Also, from 1000Mb/s on, all 4 pairs in the cable are used for signalling.
The difference in the cable for Cat3/4/5/6 is not about the number of twists. It is all about the quality of manufacture. The individual pairs need to have a number of qualities. They should have low loss, they should have minimal changes to their characteristic impedance along their length (avoiding echoes) and they should not interfere with one another. The higher specification cables go about these goals in a number of ways. If you take apart a length of Cat-5/6 you will see that each pair twists at a different rate. Over the length of the cable this tends to cancel out most of the mutual coupling between the pairs, and thus reduces cross interference. The two wires in each pair in Cat6 are typically fused together. (Something that makes patching these cables a real pain.) This helps stabilise the geometry of the pair, reducing the effect of bends in the cable on the characteristic impedance, and keeping the relative geometry of the pairs intact. Cat6 also typically has a + shaped spine that further controls the geometry of the pairs. Choice of insulation material is also critical. PTFE or the like ensures much lower loss.
Thanks! I was told, years ago, that the primary difference between Cat 3 and Cat 5 cable was the number of twists-“and the wire”. I didn’t realize that so much detail was in the wire (different twist rates, fuzing the wires together, adding a spline etc) was involved. Appreciate the info.
Did the old 10Base5, 10Base2 use similar advanced modulation, or were they plain TTL serial?
Now, if we could all get together and change the Ethernet standard one more time to get rid of the damn annoying, fragile telephone connectors.
Help!
So far so good, I ran both an RG-6 cable and a Cat5 cable from the basement, putting the splitter and modem as close to the source as possible.
Problem is that at the other end I bought GE Netowrk & Coax Wall Plate, assuming that I could connect the Cat5 cable colour for colour.
But when I got everything exposed the colours didn’t match up. The Cat5 cable is standard with orange/stripe, green/strip, brown/stripe, and blue/stripe. The wall plate has 8 different colors: white, black, red, blue, orange, yellow, green, purple.
Anyone know what the proper combination would be?
Thanks
Use this as a guide: How to wire Ethernet Cables
Success! Thanks. I had initially used the second wiring guide, but it was the first that I needed to use.
As an aside, any idea why only four of the 8 wires are used? Seems like a bit of a waste.
Basically, they were put in there to allow future upgrades. Gigabit ethernet and up uses all eight wires, but will only work with Cat-5e or better cable.